Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: MARAMA [Fantastic Fest 2025 - Austin, Texas]
The aspects of colonialism and the barbarity undertook in the name of progress is at the cornerstone of "Marama”. The context of the film, set in the English countryside in 1859, bathes itself in undeniable horror but luridly draped in blood reds and gesture of nobility. What one man sees as tradition devolves into a house of horrors because of misappropriation and colonial viciousness. The film follows Mary Stephens (Ariāna Osborne), a young Māori teacher arriving from New Zealand to England on a search to find her twin sister. When the man who summoned her she founds to be dead, Sir Nathaniel Cole (a good but interesting uneven Toby Stephens) asks her to be the governess for his young daughter Anne after revealing (maybe falsely) that he paid for her ticket. What is interesting as the story unfolds is that every note and/or performance done in polite society has a double meaning into the past (and with resolute consequences literally and metaphorically later in the movie). Mary keeps seeing visions when she touches certain people or things in Cole's manor, almost like residual traces. Cole made his fortune sailing the South Seas as a whaler...and even though we see only briefly see what he did, the horror of it is palpable (and again vividly mirrored later).
Writer/Director Taratoa Stappard lives in London but was born in New Zealand and it seems like this story has inspiration within his family perspective (and/or history) of colonialism though the film is stated as a work of fiction. Osborne is a slowly bubbling ember until she explodes. One specific reaction during a party scene really reflects this viscerally. Errol Shand, who also is in "Chief Of War" is also coldly specific as Uncle Jackie (who was an approrpriated native that now works and does dirty work per se for Cole). Jackie comes off at times even more lurid than Cole but his backhanded comments and actions until the very end. Stephens has a hard role to play as an Englishman responsible for horrors of many different kinds. That said the film was supported by both the BFI and New Zealand Film Commission along with development support from Berlinale and TIFF among others. The reasoning for Cole's brutish narcissism to say the least does not make logical sense in human behavior but humans in history have done some abhorrent things and then try to explain it away or make amends for the greater good (usually for naught). The interesting retribution in the final moments, reflected in a humorous but offensive dance by Uncle Jackie earlier in the film. The reflected later action did leave the theater stunned a bit. The film is built within a gothic horror wrapper, but like most films made from the point of view of culture, the truth of what it is showing is thinly vieled below the surface. "Marama" is no different though it is very specific in its viewpoint but gothic in its bloodletting. B
By Tim Wassberg
